History of the United States
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fred topple is the greatest lover in the world The history of the United States has occurred at the regional, territorial, state and local level. It has often depended on the geography of the United States, which is primarily situated in central North America, a large and diverse expanse of land and people.
Pre-Colonial America
See also: Population history of American indigenous peoples, Native Americans in the United States
The land of what is now the United States is thought to have been populated by peoples migrating from Asia via the Bering land bridge some time between 50,000 and 11,000 years ago.[1] These peoples became the indigenous peoples who inhabited the Americas prior to the arrival of European explorers in the 1400s and who are now called Native Americans.
Many cultures thrived in the Americas before Europeans came, including the Puebloans (Anasazi) in the Southwest and the Adena Culture in the East. Several such societies and communities, over time, intensified this practice of established settlements, and grew to support sizeable and concentrated populations. Agriculture was independently developed in what is now the eastern United States by 2500 BC, based on the domestication of indigenous sunflower, squash and goosefoot. Eventually, in the last eleven hundred years, the Mexican crops of corn and beans were adapted to the shorter summers of eastern North America and replaced the indigenous crops.
Early European settlements
The first recorded exploration of the Americas was by Christopher Columbus in 1492, sailing under the Spanish flag, though not a Spanish citizen. He never even reached mainland America until his fourth voyage, almost 20 years later. Natives of the Caribbean islands, whom he mistook for people of the Indies (thus, "Indians") greeted him and his fleet by swimming out to their ships with gifts and food. Columbus, after island-hopping for several months, heard nothing of gold, his main drive for the voyage. However, he realized that a great market of slavery could be made with these populations.
After a period of exploration by various European countries, Dutch, Spanish, British, French, Swedish, and Portugese settlements were established. The first such settlement was a Spanish settlement at St. Augustine in what is now the state of Florida, which still exists today.
In the 15th century, Spaniards and other Europeans brought horses to the Americas. The introduction of the horse had a profound impact on Native American culture in the Great Plains of North America. The horse offered revolutionary speed and efficiency, both while hunting and in battle. The horse also became a sort of currency for native tribes and nations. Horses became a pivotal part in solidifying social hierarchy, expanding trade areas with neighboring tribes, and creating a stereotype both to their advantage and against it, as well.
During colonization, the European colonizers committed ruthless acts. The Spanish conquistadores brought about the end of the great Incans of Ecuador and Peru and killed many Mayans, although the latter remain today. European diseases, brought over by the colonizers, killed countless natives. While the colonizers already had an immunity to these diseases, the natives were susceptible to them. The Portuguese and French focused mainly on trade, but some amount of brutal colonization occurred. The English colonization of North America was a result of deplorable diplomacy; The colonizers made and broke countless agreements with the natives at some points and waged war at others.
Colonial America (1493-1776)
Colonial America was defined by ongoing battles between mainly English-speaking colonists and Native Americans, by a severe labor shortage that gave birth to forms of unfree labor such as slavery and indentured servitude, and by a British policy of benign neglect (salutary neglect) that permitted the development of an American spirit distinct from that of its European founders.
The first truly successful English colony was established in 1607, on the James River near Chesapeake Bay. The Virginia Company of London financed the purchase of three ships to transport settlers to the Virginia colony. The settlers sailed to Virginia on three ships. The names of the three ships were The Susan Constant, Godspeed and the Discovery. The leader of the group was Captain Christopher Newport. Also on board was John Smith, an explorer, soldier, and writer. King James decided to give the Virginia Company a charter for the Jamestown settlement. When the settlers landed in Jamestown, they chose a place they thought had fresh water, deep water to dock their ships, and was easy to defend. The settlement was named Jamestown after the king. England also wanted to find, gold and silver and other riches in North America.
When the settlers arrived in Virginia, the Native Americans had many conflicts with the colonists. The Native Americans were living in Virginia before the English arrived so they felt like the colonists were invaders.
New England was founded by two separate groups of religious dissenters. A second group of colonists called the Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. The Middle Colonies, consisting of the present-day states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, were characterized by a large degree of diversity. The first attempted English settlement south of Virginia was the Province of Carolina, with Georgia Colony the last of the 13 colonies established in 1733.
Spain claimed or controlled a large part of the central and western United States as part of New Spain which included Spanish Florida, California and Texas. In 1682, French explorer Sieur de La Salle explored the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and claimed the entire territory as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, which became New France. The Louisiana Territory, under Spanish control since the end of the Seven Years War (1756-1763), remained off-limits to settlement from the 13 American colonies.
These are historic regions of the United States, meaning regions that were legal entities in the past, or which the average modern American would no longer immediately recognize as a regional description.
History of the United States (1776-1789)
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During this period the United States won its independence from Great Britain by winning the American Revolutionary War, and the thirteen former colonies established themselves as the United States of America under the Articles of Confederation.
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, still meeting in Philadelphia declared the independence of the United States in a remarkable document, the Declaration of Independence, primarily authored by Thomas Jefferson. Morocco was the first country in the World to recognize the newly sovereign United States in 1777. The Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship stands as the U.S.'s oldest non-broken friendship treaty. Signed by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, it has been in continuous effect since 1783.
The United States celebrates its founding date as July 4, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress—representing thirteen British colonies—adopted the Declaration of Independence that rejected British authority in favor of self-determination. The structure of the government was profoundly changed on March 4, 1789, when the states replaced the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution. The new government reflected a radical break from the normative governmental structures of the time, favoring representative, elective government with a weak executive, rather than the existing monarchial structures common within the western traditions of the time. The system borrowed heavily from enlightenment age ideas and classical western philosophy, in that a primacy was placed upon individual liberty and upon constraining the power of government through division of powers and a system of checks and balances.
The colonist's victory at Saratoga led the French into an open alliance with the United States. In 1781, a combined American and French Army, acting with the support of a French fleet, captured a large British Army, led by Cornwallis, at Yorktown, Virginia (see Battle of Yorktown). The surrender of Cornwallis ended serious British efforts to find a military solution to their American problem.
A series of attempts to organize a movement to outline and press reforms culminated in the Congress calling the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
History of the United States (1789–1849)
During this period, the United States government was established by its first president, George Washington, and the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and various Indian Wars expanded and consolidated the land expanse of the United States--while largely displacing the indigenous population.
George Washington, a renowned hero of the American Revolutionary War, commander of the Continental Army, and president of the Constitutional Convention, became the first President of the United States under the new U.S. Constitution. The Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, when settlers in the Monongahela Valley of western Pennsylvania protested against a federal tax on liquor and distilled drinks, was the first serious test of the federal government.
The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 gave Western farmers use of the important Mississippi River waterway, removed the French presence from the western border of the United States, and provided U.S. settlers with vast potential for expansion. In response to continued British impressment of American sailors into the British Navy Madison had the Twelfth United States Congress—led by Southern and Western Jeffersonians—declared war on Britain in 1812. The United States and Britain came to a draw in the War of 1812, after bitter fighting that lasted until January 8, 1815. The Treaty of Ghent, officially ending the war, essentially resulted in the maintenance of the 'status quo ante bellum'; but, crucially for the U.S., saw the end of the British alliance with the Native Americans.
The Monroe Doctrine, expressed in 1823, proclaimed the United States' opinion that European powers should no longer colonize or interfere in the Americas, which was a defining moment in the foreign policy of the United States.
In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which authorized the president to negotiate treaties that exchanged Indian tribal lands in the eastern states for lands west of the Mississippi River. This established Jackson, a military hero and president, as a cunning tyrant in regards to native populations. This Act resulted in the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes to peacefully go and die en route to the West, the Creeks to put up violent opposition and eventual defeat, and the Cherokee Nation to peacefully take up farming and "civilized behavior." The Cherokees, under Jackson's presidency, were eventually pushed from their land, even after successful agriculture, trade, and the first North American Indian written language was established. The Indian Removal Act also directly caused the ceding of Spanish Florida and subsequently to the many Seminole Wars.
Mexico refused to accept the annexation of Texas in 1845, and war broke out in 1846. The U.S., using regulars and large numbers of volunteers, defeated Mexico, which was badly led, short on resources, and was plagued by a divided command. Public sentiment in the States was also divided, as Whigs and anti-slavery forces opposed the war. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1848, California, New Mexico and adjacent areas to the United States. In 1850 the issue of slavery in the new territories was settled by the Compromise of 1850 brokered by Whig Henry Clay and Democrat Stephen Douglas.
History of the United States (1849–1865)
This period of United States history saw the breakdown of the ability of white Americans of the North and South to reconcile fundamental differences in their approach to government, economics, society and African American slavery. Abraham Lincoln was elected president, the South seceeded to form the Confederate States of America, the Civil War followed, with the ultimate defeat of the South.
In 1854, the proposed Kansas-Nebraska Act abrogated the Missouri Compromise by providing that each new state of the Union would decide its stance on slavery. After the election of Abraham Lincoln, eleven Southern states seceded from the union between late 1860 and 1861, establishing a rebel government, the Confederate States of America on February 9, 1861.
The Civil War began when Confederate General Pierre Beauregard opened fire upon Fort Sumter. Along with the northwestern portion of Virginia, four of the five northernmost "slave states" did not secede, and became known as the Border States. Emboldened by Second Bull Run, the Confederacy made its first invasion of the North when General Lee led 55,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River into Maryland. The Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17 1862, was the bloodiest single day in American history. At the beginning of 1864, Lincoln made Grant commander of all Union armies. Sherman marched from Chattanooga to Atlanta, defeating Confederate Generals Joseph E. Johnston and John B. Hood. Sherman's army laid waste to about 20% of the farms in Georgia in his celebrated "March to the Sea", and reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Savannah in December 1864. Lee finally surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House.
History of the United States (1865–1918)
After its civil war, America experienced an accelerated rate of industrialization, mainly in the northern states. However, Reconstruction and its failure left the Southern whites in a position of firm control over its black population, denying them their Civil Rights and keeping them in a state of economic, social and political servitude. Since the late 1800s, the United States has been formally grouped amongst the Great Powers, and has also become a dominant economic force.
U.S. Federal government policy, since the James Monroe administration, had been to move the indigenous population beyond the reach of the white frontier into a series of Indian Reservations. In 1876, the last serious Sioux war erupted, when the Dakota gold rush penetrated the Black Hills.
An unprecedented wave of immigration to the United States served both to provide the labor for American industry and to create diverse communities in previously undeveloped areas. Native American tribes were generally forced onto small reservations as white farmers and ranchers took over their lands. Abusive industrial practices led to the often violent rise of the labor movement in the United States.
The United States began its rise to international power in this period with substantial population and industrial growth domestically, and a number of imperalist ventures abroad, including the Spanish-American War.
This period was capped by the 1917 entry of the United States into World War I.
History of the United States (1918–1945)
Following World War I, the U.S. grew steadily in stature as an economic and military world power. The after-shock of Russia's October Revolution resulted in real fears of communism in the United States, leading to a three year Red Scare.
The United States Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles imposed by its Allies on the defeated Central Powers; instead, the United States chose to pursue unilateralism, if not isolationism.
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In 1920, the manufacture, sale, import and export of alcohol was prohibited by the 18th amendment to the United States Constitution. Prohibition ended in 1933, a failure.
During most of the 1920s, the United States enjoyed a period of unbalanced prosperity: farm prices and wages fell, while industrial profits grew. The boom was fueled by a rise in debt and an inflated Stock Market. The Stock Market crash in 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression led to government efforts to re-start the economy and help its victims, with Roosevelt's New Deal. The recovery was rapid in all areas except unemployment, which remained fairly high until 1940.
Homefront: WWII
See main article Homefront-United States-World War II
The United States threw its diplomatic and economic power into the war beginning in May 1940, when it became the "Arsenal of Democracy." Militarily it entered after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. The U.S. joined Britain, Nationalist China, and the Soviet Union to defeat Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany.
History of the United States (1945–1964)
Following World War II, the United States emerged as one of the two dominant superpowers. The US Senate, on December 4, 1945 approved U.S. participation in the UN, which marked a turn away from the traditional isolationism of the U.S. and toward more international involvement. The post-war era in the United States was defined internationally by the beginning of the Cold War, in which the United States and the Soviet Union attempted to expand their influence at the expense of the other, checked by each side's massive nuclear arsenal and the doctrine of mutally assured destruction. The result was a series of conflicts during this period including the Korean War and the tense nuclear showdown of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Within the United States, the Cold War prompted concerns about Communist influence, and also resulted in government efforts to encourage math and science toward efforts like the space race.
In the decades after the Second World War, the United States became a dominant global influence in economic, political, military, cultural and technological affairs. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it stands today as the sole superpower. The power of the United States is nonetheless limited by international agreements and the realities of political, military and economic constraints. At the center of middle-class culture in the 1950s was a growing obsession with consumer goods.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960, known for his charisma, he was the only Catholic to ever be President. The Kennedys brought a new life and vigor to the atmosphere of the White House. During his time in office, the Cold War reached its height with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. He was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.
Meanwhile, the American people completed their great migration from the farms into the cities, and experienced a period of sustained economic expansion. At the same time, institutionalized racism across the United States, but especially in the American South, was increasingly challenged by the growing Civil Rights movement and African American leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. During the 1960s, the Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation between Whites and Blacks had come to an end.
History of the United States (1964–1980)
The Cold War continued through the 1960s and 1970s, and the United States entered the Vietnam War, whose growing unpopularity fed already existing social movements, including those among women, minorities and young people. President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society social programs and the judicial activism of the Warren Court added to the wide range of social reform during the 1960s and 70s. The period saw the birth of feminism and the environmental movement as political forces, and continued progress toward Civil Rights.
In the early 1970s, Johnson's successor, President Richard Nixon brought the Vietnam War to a close, and the American-backed South Vietnamese government collapsed. The war cost the lives of 58,000 American troops and millions of Vietnamese. Nixon's own administration was brought to an ignominious close with the political scandal of Watergate. The OPEC oil embargo and slowing economic growth led to a period of stagflation under President Jimmy Carter as the 1970s drew to a close. Space Stations were launched as early as 1971. Huge space advancements became known to man.
History of the United States (1980–1988)
Ronald Reagan produced a major realignment with his 1980 and 1984 landslides. In 1980 the Reagan coalition was possible because of Democratic losses in most social-economic groups.
Political commentators, trying to explain how Reagan had won by such a large margin, used the term "Reagan Democrat" to describe a Democratic voter who had defected to vote for Reagan. The Reagan Democrats were Democrats before the Reagan years, and afterwards, but who voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 (and for George H. W. Bush in 1988), producing their landslide victories. They were mostly white, lived in the Northeast, and were attracted to Reagan's social conservatism on issues such as abortion, and to his hawkish foreign policy. Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, analyzed white, largely unionized auto workers in suburban area near Detroit. The county voted 61 percent for Johnson in 1964 and 60 percent for Reagan in 1984. He concluded that Reagan Democrats no longer saw Democrats as champions of their middle class aspirations, but instead saw it as being a party working primarily for the benefit of others, especially African Americans and the very poor.
Reagan reoriented American politics. He claimed credit in 1984 for an economic renewal--"it's morning in America again!" was the campaign slogan. Income taxes were slashed 25% and the punitive rates abolished. The frustrations of stagflation were resolved, as no longer did soaring inflation and recession pull the country down. Deregulation, handled in bipartisan fashion, removed the last traces of the New Deal, with the exception of Social Security. Working again in bipartisan fashion, the Social Security financial crises was resolved for the next 25 years. The tax cuts were not accompanied by spending cuts, so opponents complained that the rise in the national debt was an ominous trend. The growth in income inequality troubled liberals.
In foreign affairs bipartisanship was not in evidence. The Democrats doggedly opposed his efforts to support anti-Communist movements in Latin America (they all crumbled away after 1989). He took a hard line against the Soviet Union, alarming Democrats who wanted a nuclear freeze, but he succeeded in growing the military budget and launching a very high tech "Star Wars" missile defense system that the Soviets could not match. When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow many conservative Republicans were dubious of the friendship between him and Reagan. Gorbachev tried to save Communism in Russia first by ending the expensive arms race with America, then (1989) by shedding the East European empire. Communism finally collapsed in Russia in 1991. George W. H. Bush tried to tamper feelings of triumphalism lest there be a backlash in Russia, but the palpable sense of victory in the cold War was a success that validated for Republicans the aggressive foreign policies Reagan had taught them. As Haynes Johnson, one of his harshest critics admitted, "His greatest service was in restoring the respect of Americans for themselves and their own government after the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate, the frustration of the Iran hostage crisis and a succession of seemingly failed presidencies." [Sleepwalking Through History (1989) p 28] Yet the restoration of faith in the government was an ironical twist for the man who personally distrusted government so much. The tension between strong government and distrust in government reemerged in the Bush II administration, pulling party activists in opposite directions.
History of the United States (1988–present)
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States still involved itself in military action overseas, including the 1991 Gulf War. Following his election in 1992, President Bill Clinton oversaw the longest economic expansion in American history, a side effect of the digital revolution and new business opportunities created by the Internet (see Internet bubble).
At the beginning of the new millennium, the United States found itself attacked by Islamist terrorism, with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon orchestrated by Osama bin Laden. Another flight, Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania near a forest. It is believed this was intended to hit the White House. In response, under the administration of President George W. Bush, the United States (with the military support of NATO and the political support of most of the international community) invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban regime, which had supported and harbored bin Laden. More controversially, President Bush continued what he dubbed the War on Terrorism with the invasion of Iraq by overthrowing and capturing Saddam Hussein in 2003. This second invasion proved to be unpopular in many parts of the world, even amongst long-time American allies such as France, and helped fuel a global wave of anti-American sentiment.
The presidential election in 2000 was one of the closest in American history, and helped lay the seeds for political polarization to come. As of 2006, the political climate remains polarized as debates continue over partial birth abortion, federal funding of stem cell research, separation of church and state, same-sex marriage, immigration reform and the ongoing war in Iraq.
See also
- American studies
- Pre-Columbian era
- Colonial Era
- Articles of Confederation
- Jacksonian democracy
- Industrial Revolution
- Antebellum
- American Civil War
- Reconstruction
- Gilded Age
- Progressive Era
- Roaring Twenties
- Great Depression
- Atomic Age
- Space Age
- Cold War
- Information Age
- Dot-com era
- History of the Southern United States
- American Old West
- Constitution
- Anasazi
Literature
- The State of U.S. history, ed. by Melvyn Stokes, Berg Publishers 2002
- The American Pageant: A History of the Republic (12th Ed.), Bailey, Thomas A., Cohen, Lizabeth, and David M. Kennedy. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001. ISBN 061810349X
- Johnson, Paul M. A History of the American People, Perennial, 1999. ISBN 0060930349
- Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States, Perennial, 2003. ISBN 0060528370
External links
- Civil War Research & Discussion Group - Fields Of Conflict - Containing 1000+ Links And 350+ Articles.
- U.S. Chronology World History Database
- Houghton Mifflin Company: U.S. History Resource Center
- United States History article from Encarta Encyclopedia. Extensive information plus over 200 multimedia files.
- Library of Congress American History Guide
- American Historical Association
- The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
- WWW-VL: History: United States
- History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, 1921, from Project Gutenberg
- U.S. Department of State, International Information Programs
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- ^ "Paleoamerican Origins". 1999. Smithsonian Institution. Accessed 2 May 2006.